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Due to the nature of this story, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, substance use, domestic abuse, animal abuse, cannibalism, and violence. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and abuse, visit Spotify.com slash resources.
Most marriages begin with a series of vows between partners. With flowers in their hands and butterflies in their stomachs, they'll promise to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in cheating and in murder. At least, those are the vows you make if you're Kelly Cochran.
On September 14th, 2002, Kelly and her husband Jason promised to love each other forever. And if anyone got in the way, well, they'd just have to kill them.
I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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From the time she was a little girl, Kelly Cochran was defiant. Kelly was one of three kids growing up on a farm near Hobart, Indiana in the 1980s and 90s. It was a simple, quiet life. But the older she got, the more serious Kelly's rebellion became. She ran away from home more than once, even living on the street to avoid going back to her parents.
As a teenager, Kelly started to experiment with alcohol. Over time, her substance use escalated to meth and heroin. When Kelly's family found out, they offered her support, tried to help her get clean, and monitored her behavior around the clock. Not exactly appealing to a rebellious teen.
Kelly's substance use continued. She insisted that she didn't have a problem, even after she passed out in her plate of food right in the middle of a family dinner. Eventually, Kelly's parents sent her to a home for troubled girls, an even stricter environment that only made things worse. Kelly hated authority in all its forms. No matter what, she refused to change.
By the time Kelly was 18, she was totally out of control and back living with her parents. Her mother, Melanie, decided enough was enough. She kicked Kelly out of the house until she got clean. But a few months later, Kelly's grandmother died, and Melanie had a change of heart.
She told Kelly she could come home as long as she consented to random drug tests. Kelly responded with a condition of her own. She'd take the drug tests as long as her new boyfriend, Jason Cochran, could come with her.
Jason's family lived on the farm next door. He was four years older, so though he'd known Kelly almost her entire life, they didn't hang out much. Until a fateful summer bonfire. Surrounded by friends, their eyes met across the burning embers. Sparks flew, both literally and figuratively. But they didn't officially start dating until around the time Kelly's mom Melanie kicked her out.
Melanie reluctantly accepted her daughter's boyfriend as the family's new roommate. Later on, she said the couple was dysfunctional from the get-go. Kelly was more stubborn than ever, fiercely independent, and very manipulative. It was clear she enjoyed toying with other people's feelings, especially Jason's.
By almost all accounts, Kelly was the dominant partner. She used her cunning to get him to do whatever she asked, treating her boyfriend like a game she could win. Which, honestly, seemed to suit Jason just fine. Jason was the passive type, and usually preferred to stay silent if it meant avoiding confrontation.
But Jason also dealt with severe, sometimes debilitating mental health issues. When he fell into a depressive mood, a darker, more violent side emerged. Melanie described one incident where Jason beat a litter of kittens to death. And Kelly told some people Jason abused her, while insisting to others that he never laid a hand on her.
The one thing most people agreed on was that Kelly and Jason were an unlikely and ultimately incompatible match. When they eventually got engaged, Kelly's family told them as much. Of course, Kelly was stubborn as ever. On September 14th, 2002, 20-year-old Kelly married 24-year-old Jason in a Methodist church,
The event was low-key, but sweet. At least, that's how it looked on the outside.
Most marriage vows are full of flowery language about love and loyalty, but Kelly and Jason's relationship was far from conventional, and their vows were unsettling. According to Kelly, on their wedding day, the couple made a pact. If either of them was ever unfaithful, the partner that cheated swore to kill their own lover.
It's worth noting that this vow wasn't part of their public ceremony, and we only know about it from Kelly's confession, after she'd been arrested for murder. A few months later, the Cochrans moved into their own home in Hobart, on the same street where they'd both grown up just a few houses down. Not long after settling into their new house, their relationship was on the rocks again.
Jason blistered at the smallest inconveniences. Kelly snapped at him whenever he got moody. It wasn't just that she refused to give him space, she actively belittled his mental health struggles. Kelly believed she could keep Jason under her thumb by playing on his deepest insecurities. The prospect excited her. She was already a skilled manipulator, but there was always more to learn.
She began studying psychology, sociology, and forensics at nearby Purdue University. Kelly even kept a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the back of her truck. She'd often skim the pages to teach herself the telltale signs of mental illness.
On his podcast, The Pact, Josh Hallmark, who you heard on our Israel Keys episodes, says Kelly had a habit of armchair diagnosing both herself and Jason with different mental health conditions. Court documents show that multiple times during their marriage, both Cochrans checked into mental health facilities. Despite this, Kelly managed to keep her grades up and start a successful business, a pool installation and repair company.
For the most part, Kelly did the admin and Jason did the grunt work. Unfortunately, years of manual labor gave Jason intense back pain that got increasingly debilitating. Eventually, Jason was barely able to move, let alone work, and he was unable to perform sexually. This was a disaster for Jason's already low self-esteem.
The depression he'd experienced for most of his life intensified. He was completely dependent on Kelly for everything. Soon, his feelings of helplessness twisted into rage. Kelly claimed Jason's anger reached a tipping point in 2008. During an argument, he pulled out a gun. Kelly didn't relent, so Jason pointed it at her head. She dared him to pull the trigger. And he shot.
Or at least he tried. According to Kelly, their guns were almost always loaded, except that one time. From there, Kelly's drug use worsened. Jason's depression deepened, and the cracks in their marriage turned to gaping holes. If they had any hope of staying together, they needed to do something drastic. So Jason came up with a plan.
He suggested they move to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, get a change of scenery, a fresh start. So in the dead of winter in 2014, Kelly and Jason Cochran packed up their entire lives, kissed their families goodbye, and drove six hours to northern Michigan.
The move was quick, so quick Josh Hallmark suggests they were running from something more than just their marriage struggles. And where they went, it was hard to be found.
Michigan's Upper Peninsula is just across the Wisconsin state line, on the edge of the Ottawa National Forest and the Great Lakes. The region has over a million acres of wild, uninhabited space, dotted with abandoned, flooded mines. On the surface, the old mines look like ponds, but they go very, very deep. In the winter, the snow can reach waist height.
Despite its beauty, the region isn't for the faint of heart, and the numbers reflect that. Iron County, where the couple bought their new house, had a population of just under 12,000 people, which suited the Cochrane's perfectly.
Kelly got a gig as a cashier at a hardware store, and later a second job as a waitress. Jason's back pain was as bad as ever, so he stayed home. He mostly smoked weed, fished, and played computer games. Despite the move, things didn't change that much. Jason hated how often Kelly was gone, and Kelly, ambitious as she was, thought Jason was pathetic, and his disability was holding her back.
Her attitude only made Jason more depressed, which made Kelly like him less. They fought so often and so hard that eventually it just became easier to avoid each other. With Kelly working two jobs, it wasn't hard for them to drift apart.
In June, Kelly was hired as an electrical assembler at Oldenburg Group Incorporated, a company that manufactured military and mining equipment. She loved working with her hands and was excited the new position would give her the chance to do that. She wanted the job so much that she actually stopped using drugs to pass the interview screening.
Upon starting, Kelly got on well with her new co-workers, who described her as kind and helpful, the type of person who mowed her elderly neighbor's lawns. We can't overemphasize how strongly Kelly charmed her co-workers, because within a few months, Kelly was dating two of them. Yes, two. Eric Erickson and Chris Regan.
Here's where the story gets murky. Kelly claimed that she and Jason agreed to separate. According to Kelly, Jason was fully on board with the new arrangement, where Kelly dated multiple men.
Jason's interviews suggest otherwise, though he may not have felt he had a choice. Kelly told her husband that the only reason she hadn't divorced him yet was because he couldn't survive without her. The mere threat of Kelly leaving was enough to send Jason into a tailspin. He seethed with anger whenever Kelly went out with either of her boyfriends. In Jason's defense, Kelly and Chris began a full-blown affair.
Chris was an older man with his share of baggage. Twice divorced, two grown kids, ex-military. He'd moved to Iron County for another relationship, but that didn't last either. Chris stayed in town working for the Oldenburg Group. As a proud Air Force vet, he was a perfect fit for supervising the company's military projects, and he enjoyed his work.
However, Chris didn't plan to stay there forever. He and his adult son, Chris Jr., hoped to move to Asheville, North Carolina. Chris was already deep into this process when Kelly walked in for a job interview at the Oldenburg Group. They kept it professional, but the sexual tension was palpable. In June 2014, the two met up for a hike. One thing led to another, and the date ended with sex.
Chris knew he wouldn't be in Iron County long and figured a casual fling would be a nice way to fill his time. But Kelly Cochran was anything but casual.
By July 2014, Chris Regan and Kelly Cochran were in the thick of an affair. They had a steady routine going. Four or five nights a week, Kelly visited Chris's apartment to cook dinner. They'd eat, have sex, and Kelly would go home to Jason.
Kelly said she refused to spend the night at Chris's out of respect for her husband. It was a strange concession, but Chris didn't seem to mind. He wanted to keep things low-key anyway. He was adamant that no one at work find out they were seeing each other. According to someone who knew them both, Chris was worried about how their relationship might look. He viewed Kelly as rough around the edges, crass, and unrefined.
Chris saw himself as a clean-cut, respectable veteran. However, they weren't able to keep the secret long. Their coworkers caught on, cracking jokes. But the hubbub died down pretty quickly. Before long, Chris was back to his old groove. Kelly was not. By August, her relationship with Jason was at an all-time low. Now, she wasn't just threatening divorce. She actually wanted to go through with it.
Jason was devastated. He knew Kelly was seeing two other men, Chris Regan and Eric Erickson. We don't know a ton about Kelly's relationship with Eric, but she'd regularly text him and they'd meet up around town to have sex. And all of this was romantic energy she wasn't expending on Jason.
For a while, Jason let it go in hopes it would prevent her from leaving him. But the idea of divorce shattered him. He grew up in a home where you worked through your problems, no matter how bad they were. Divorce meant failure, and he felt like he'd failed in every other aspect of his life. This would be the final nail in the coffin.
By September, Jason had stopped eating and sleeping. He lost nearly 50 pounds. He heard voices in his head telling him the world would be better off without him. By October, Jason checked into a psychiatric ward. Kelly seemed indifferent. She texted her sister saying she was going to visit Jason in the hospital to end things between them once and for all.
We don't know if that conversation ever happened, but five days after checking himself into the psychiatric ward, Jason was released and returned home. What happened next is disputed. A few days after Jason returned, on September 27th, 2014, Kelly told her supervisor at Oldenburg that her husband was threatening to kill her and himself. The next day, she didn't show up to work.
The day after that, Oldenburg's HR director called the Iron River Police Department and requested a wellness check. When police arrived at the Cochran's house, no one was home. Nothing further came of the call.
But Jason told a different story. He claimed that after he was released from the hospital, he felt like he'd finally made peace with Kelly's many affairs, and he had prescriptions for Zoloft and Ativan to treat his mental health. He said their relationship improved. After all, Chris Regan was preparing for his move to North Carolina. He would be out of Kelly and Jason's lives soon. One way or another.
According to Kelly Cochran, her boyfriend, Chris Regan, asked her to move to North Carolina with him. But everyone who knew Chris, including his son, Junior, was positive he didn't. He was looking forward to starting totally fresh.
And Jason Cochran seemed to feel the same. His and Kelly's relationship was finally improving. Recently, Kelly had made an effort to spend time with her husband. And perhaps thanks to his new medications, he was no longer riddled with anxiety every time she left the house. Sometime around October 2014, Kelly and Jason had a serious conversation about how to make their marriage work.
When Jason asked what they could do, Kelly already had a plan. Remember the vows they made at their wedding? It was time to truly live by them. Specifically, one vow. They had to kill Chris Regan.
Jason wanted to go straight to Chris's apartment and get it over with, but Kelly disagreed. It had to be at their house, where they could control the flow of evidence. She had a minor in forensics and thought she knew how to get away with murder. As usual, Jason went along with whatever Kelly wanted.
The following story is just one of Kelly's version of events. A version which was found to be true enough for a conviction in a court of law. However, multiple law enforcement officials have questioned the exact logistics of Kelly's story. On the morning of October 14th, Kelly texted Chris to invite him over. She told him Jason was out of town and she planned to cook something special. Chris agreed to dinner.
Around 4:30 p.m., he arrived at the house. He parked his car in an alley nearby so Kelly's neighbors didn't see him. Then Chris walked around to the back door. Kelly was waiting there to greet him. She said she'd made lasagna special for him. But they never got to the kitchen. The second Kelly let Chris into the house, the two got intimate right there in the back entryway by the stairs to the basement.
Little did Chris know, they weren't alone. A gunshot rang out from below. The bullet hit Chris in the back of the head, killing him instantly. His lifeless body fell down the basement stairs. Jason emerged from the bottom of the steps, loaded gun in his hand. He and Kelly looked down at Chris's body and then at each other.
An electric attraction coursed between them, but their job wasn't over yet. Together, they dragged Chris down the stairs and left him there. Meanwhile, one of them hopped into Chris's gray Hyundai Genesis and the other got into Kelly's white truck. Both drove to a park and ride about 30 miles north. The couple abandoned Chris's car in the lot, climbed back into their truck, and drove home.
By the time they got back, Kelly and Jason couldn't contain their feelings any longer. The couple had sex for the first time in ages, all while Chris Regan's body lay lifeless in their basement.
It seemed like their sadistic plan had worked. Chris was gone and their marriage was no longer on life support. Little did the couple know that the most difficult test of their love was just about to begin. About two weeks later, Chris's friend, Terry O'Donnell, unlocked the door to Chris's apartment and her heart sank.
Half-packed boxes littered the floor, and post-it note to-do lists covered the cabinets. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, and a suitcase lay open on the bed. The more Terri poked around, the more disturbed she became.
This mess wasn't like Chris at all, and neither was the lack of communication. Chris and Terry were the best of friends. They checked in almost every day. But now, Terry hadn't heard from him in almost two weeks. The last time she talked to Chris, he was planning a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, to take a drug test for his new job. He should have been back by now. After seeing his apartment, Terry knew it in her gut.
Chris never made it to Asheville. Terry raced to the Iron River Police Department and sat down with Police Chief Laura Frizzo to file a missing persons report. Halfway through their conversation, Sergeant Cindy Barrett arrived to take over,
Frizzo's shift was finished, but she assured Terry the case was in good hands. And it was. Within a day, Sergeant Barrett and Terry O'Donnell had tracked down Chris Regan's car, abandoned at the park-and-ride. To Terry, this was another red flag. Chris loved his car, and he planned to drive it to Asheville.
Meanwhile, Chief Rizzo couldn't stop thinking about Terry's story. His employer, the Oldenburg Group, sounded oddly familiar. Then it hit her. A few weeks earlier, the police station got a call from the Oldenburg Group's HR director. She'd requested a wellness check for one of their employees. Could it be just a coincidence?
Though Chief Frizzo was technically off the clock, she had to investigate. She called the HR director and learned the employee in question was Kelly Cochran. Kelly didn't show up for work that day and was fired shortly afterward for failing to provide the proper documentation for a medical leave.
From there, Chief Frizzo turned the conversation to Chris Regan. She learned that Chris was moving to Asheville and had seemingly left earlier than planned. He hadn't come to work since before October 15th. Oh, and he'd been dating Kelly. An alarm bell went off in Chief Frizzo's head.
Within a day, Sergeant Barrett and another officer visited the Cochran's house. Jason answered the door. When he saw the officers, he stepped outside and slammed the door shut behind him. The officers asked if Kelly was home. Jason looked back at the house for a moment, then said she was out.
But at that very moment, Kelly walked out the front door. She greeted the officers with a smile and apologized for her husband's behavior. How could she help them? When the officers mentioned Chris Regan, Kelly looked shocked. She claimed she'd messaged him on October 15th, but he hadn't answered her. Upon hearing about the abandoned car, Kelly remarked that Chris loved the car. Past tense.
Suspicious, but not enough for an arrest. From here, the police had to tread carefully. At this point, the investigation was largely a hunch, and they had to consider other possibilities, like suicide.
Still, Chief Rizzo couldn't shake the feeling that the Cochrans were hiding something. She filed search warrants for their phones, car, and house. She talked to other friends and family. Then, the police brought the Cochrans in for questioning more than once.
Kelly and Jason both denied knowing anything about Chris' disappearance, but at one point Jason broke down crying out of nowhere. And at another, Kelly said she'd never heard of the park-and-ride lot where Chris' car was found.
With that, Chief Frizzo had everything she needed. She'd already spoken to Kelly's other lover, Eric Erickson. He claimed they'd often meet up and have sex at the park and ride. Kelly knew exactly where the lot was. But Chief Frizzo hit another roadblock. She had to wait almost four months for her search warrant to be approved. It finally came through in March 2015.
In the house, authorities found an astounding amount of weaponry: elaborately carved daggers, bows and arrows, a spiked medieval club, and giant swords and battle axes that looked straight out of Lord of the Rings.
They also found an unregistered handgun, and several registered guns too. One of the doors was broken, as if someone hit it during a fight, and luminol revealed traces of blood on the living room ceiling.
As Chief Frizzo inspected the Cochran's yard, a neighbor approached her. He said that a few months earlier, on an October afternoon, he'd smelled something rank coming from the Cochran's property. The stench was truly awful, unlike anything he'd smelled before. When he went out to investigate, he witnessed Jason burning something in a barrel in the backyard.
A further search of the yard revealed a burned saw blade and metal that appeared to come from a pair of jeans, but no barrel. Until they searched the flooded mine nearby, there they found the burn barrel. The day after the police search, the Cochrans left the state.
Since they hadn't been charged with anything yet, there wasn't much Police Chief Frizzo could do. So she decided to search their house again. She had a feeling they'd missed something. And she was right. After a few hours, Frizzo uncovered a set of notebooks belonging to Jason. One of them was titled, Where Monsters Hide. The main character was a man named Quack Quack, which happened to be Jason's nickname.
Quack Quack was married, had health problems, and was angry at the world, just like Jason. And he was a killer. Where Monsters Hide described a series of violent murders and dark crimes, even pedophilia, it gave dates, names, locations, and it claimed that perpetrators were well acquainted with the smell of fear.
This wasn't enough evidence to move forward with, but the clues kept pouring in.
Even though Jason and Kelly had fled Michigan, they weren't hiding from investigators. Over the next few months, they regularly called the prosecutor's office, fishing for updates. During one phone call, Frizzo told Kelly that Chris's case had been changed from a missing persons investigation to a homicide investigation. The police needed her DNA for testing. Kelly immediately hung up.
So, Chief Frizzo honed in on two of Jason's friends, their neighbor David Saylor and his uncle. Frizzo brought the men into the station for a chat. Right away, the Saylors gave her interesting information. From their perspective, the couple barely spent any time together and argued when they did. But suddenly, around the time Chris went missing, they became inseparable.
Around that same time, Jason borrowed a power saw from David. The neighbors heard buzzing from the Cochran's home that entire night. When they asked Jason what he'd been doing the next day, he said he was renovating the house. But David never saw him change a thing.
Not long after that, the Cochrans invited the sailors over for a barbecue. This surprised David. The Cochrans had never invited them over for food before, and that afternoon they served what he estimated as hundreds of dollars worth of meat. This was also odd, as the Cochrans had spent plenty of time complaining to him about their financial troubles. This next detail is the most disturbing, so feel free to skip ahead a minute.
David described the meat as, quote, transparent with an odd texture like shrimp. He'd never had anything like it. When he asked Jason what it was, Jason told him a story about being an exotic meat butcher back in Indiana.
Jason was never a professional butcher. And in his manuscript, Where Monsters Hide, Jason describes the couple revealing a big surprise at a neighborhood barbecue after the wife, quote, In multiple interviews since, David Saylor has stated he believes he ate Chris Regan.
Chris's complete remains have never been found. The police never formally investigated this lead, not because they didn't think it held weight, but because they didn't think it would help solve Chris's murder. At the time, Iron River had a police force of four, so they only had resources to pursue leads that would secure a conviction, even if it meant they couldn't get the full story.
Later in the interview, Chief Frizzo asked David if he was willing to become an informant to keep tabs on Kelly and Jason. He agreed and told Frizzo the couple was staying at Kelly's parents' house in Hobart, Indiana.
The second a warrant for Kelly and Jason's DNA came through, Frizzo contacted the Hobart police to let them know where to find the Cochrans. Though the local authorities would serve the warrant, Frizzo still wanted to be there when the Cochrans came into the station, so she made the six-hour drive to Hobart.
On July 24th, two officers went to the house where Kelly and Jason were staying. They found Jason standing in the driveway. When they told him they had a warrant to extract his DNA, he trembled uncontrollably. They led him into a patrol car and drove him back to the Hobart Police Department, while two other officers went to pick up Kelly at work.
Jason was shocked to see Police Chief Frizzo in the interrogation room. As soon as she started to ask questions, he asked for a lawyer, so Frizzo decided to try her luck with Kelly instead. But if Kelly was surprised to see Frizzo in Indiana, she didn't show it. Frizzo asked Kelly about the park and ride, and once again, Kelly denied knowing where it was.
Frizzo called her out. She knew Kelly visited the park and ride with Eric Erickson. Kelly, clearly shaken, refused to respond. Before Frizzo left the room, Kelly asked where Jason was. Frizzo turned back, locked eyes with Kelly, and smirked.
The move was subtle, but Frizzo could tell it had made an impression. She could see the fear in Kelly's eyes, the suspicion that Jason had turned on her. The strategy planted a seed of doubt in Kelly's mind, but it wasn't enough to turn her against Jason, at least not yet. Frizzo needed more help, so she reached out to the FBI. To her surprise, they eagerly took on the case.
The FBI had resources the local police didn't. One of the first things they did was reverse engineer the GPS in Chris's car. Almost instantly, the case shot into high gear. Using the new data, investigators were able to place Chris's car at the Cochran's home on the last day he was seen.
The FBI also conducted another search of the Cochran's home. Beneath the porch on the side of the house, they found a lucky blue rabbit's foot. Chris' friend Terry confirmed it. Chris was superstitious and used to carry a lucky rabbit's foot in his back pocket. Another lead, but not one that could lead to an arrest. Over the next few months, Frizzo and her team combed through hundreds of documents, phone records, and reports.
But before they could catch Kelly and Jason, there'd be another murder. In February 2016, 16 months after Chris Regan went missing, Kelly Cochran called 911 from her parents' home in Hobart, Indiana.
Paramedics arrived to find Jason Cochran sitting on the ground with his back against the wall and his head drooping to the side. His skin was purple and he was covered in vomit. While first responders tried to revive him, Kelly hovered, asking non-stop questions. After a few minutes, the paramedics rushed Jason into the ambulance, pumped him full of medication, and connected him to a machine to help him breathe.
But it was too late. Jason died at the hospital. Toxicology reports showed massive amounts of heroin in his body, an overdose. Soon after Police Chief Frizzo heard the news, she got a call from Detective Jeremy Ogden at the Hobart Police Department. He was leading the investigation into Jason's death and wanted to talk about Chris' case.
Detective Ogden told Frizzo that Kelly was extremely disruptive when the paramedics came to check on Jason. This could have been a stress reaction, except when the detective went to the coroner to see Jason's body, he found his face covered in bruises. The coroner believed they were hemorrhages from pressure to his neck, not in line with a drug overdose.
the coroner was ruling Jason's cause of death as suffocation. A homicide. Detective Ogden had enough evidence to charge Kelly Cochran with one murder, but after looking into her, he realized he might be able to charge her with two. Which is why he called Police Chief Frizzo. He had a plan.
The next day, Detective Ogden met Kelly at her parents' house. She led him to the room where Jason died and gave him her version of events. Ogden watched her intently. Kelly kept a straight face as she described waking up to her husband lying next to her, his skin blue.
Beyond her chilling lack of emotion, there were discrepancies in her story. First, Kelly said Jason had fallen off the bed and then vomited on the floor. Later, she said he vomited on the bed. The tone changed when Ogden asked Kelly about Chris Regan. Right off the bat, she said she didn't know anything about the disappearance. Besides, Chris didn't have anything to do with Jason. She didn't understand why Ogden would ask.
Ogden switched tactics. He told Kelly he just wanted to give Chris's family closure. Jason was gone. She didn't need to protect him anymore. Instead of answering, Kelly just smiled.
Over the next few weeks, Detective Ogden continued to talk to Kelly. He made her choices clear. She could either be a suspect or a witness. Ogden emphasized that Jason wasn't around to tell his side of the story. Kelly could control the narrative. But as it turned out, Ogden wasn't completely right about that.
Jason's friend, Walt Ammerman, came forward and told police there was no way Jason had died of a heroin overdose. Jason may have smoked weed to ease his back pain, but he'd never been into hard drugs. That was Kelly. Speaking of, Walt thought Kelly was controlling and treated Jason poorly. He was suspicious of her, and he wanted to help with any investigation.
Ogden had just the job for Walt. He asked him to come to Indiana to become a confidential informant. Walt agreed. A few days later, they met up and executed Detective Ogden's plan. Walt dialed Kelly's number while Ogden listened in. When she answered, Walt told her that back in January, he'd gotten a package from Jason. Inside was a note and a sealed envelope.
The message instructed Walt to send the envelope to the Iron River Police Department if anything happened to him. Kelly let out a loud sigh. In a quiet, almost desperate voice, she asked him not to send it. Walt replied that he had to do something about the package. Kelly let out a laugh and then almost immediately started weeping. She told him to do what he had to, then hung up.
Walt and Ogden looked at each other and smiled. There was no letter, no package in the mail. Now they'd wait for the ruse to work. Like clockwork, Kelly called the police the next day. She sounded nervous when she told Ogden that a letter was on its way, explaining what happened to Chris.
Ogden suppressed the gasp rising in his throat. It was the first time Kelly admitted to knowing anything about Chris's death. Ogden had Kelly in his crosshairs. He just needed to press a little harder, so he made an unconventional move. He went to the forest where Kelly often hiked, and he carved a message into a tree. Chris is here.
Within weeks, Kelly texted Ogden. She needed to speak with him right away. She was at the Veterans Memorial Park. Ogden found Kelly completely passed out in the front seat of her truck. He revived her and persuaded her to go to a restaurant to talk. He could see Kelly was unraveling. This was his chance. He had to work fast.
At the restaurant, Kelly rambled about the futility of life. Then she told Ogden she wanted to make a deal. If he told her how Jason had died, she'd tell him what happened to Chris Regan. Ogden looked at her, one eyebrow raised. He said Jason had died from a heroin overdose and suffocation.
Kelly asked if he thought she'd killed her husband. Ogden said he didn't think she did. He knew. Kelly stared at him blankly for a moment, then became dodgy and evasive. It was clear she wasn't going to keep her word, so Ogden walked Kelly to her car and watched her get inside. As he turned to go, she rolled down her window and suddenly yelled, "'Jason killed Chris!'
Detective Ogden brought Kelly to the precinct, where she stated that Chris's murder was all Jason's idea. She'd only invited Chris over for dinner, but as she and Chris had sex, Jason shot him. Then he dragged the body to the basement to dismember it. Kelly said Jason made her bag the pieces and take them upstairs. Together, they took the body out to the woods.
Kelly relayed the story casually, as if it were a mundane chore. But Ogden knew she was lying from the get-go. Her story was wildly inconsistent. Still, he needed to keep her talking. He persuaded Kelly to go with him to Iron River to show where she and Jason dumped Chris's body. There were over a million acres of forest in the area. It was highly unlikely they'd find anything without Kelly's help.
They arrived in Iron River early the next morning. Kelly directed Ogden to a hiking area called Pentoga Trail. Meanwhile, Police Chief Frizzo and a few other officers followed.
For the next few hours, Kelly, Ogden, Frizzo, and a canine unit searched the area until the officers realized Kelly was leading them on a wild goose chase. They weren't going to find any evidence that day, so they called it and headed back to Indiana. By that point, Ogden had gotten to know Kelly pretty well. If there was one thing she loved, it was playing games.
But he liked games too, and now it was time for his favorite: Good Cop, Bad Cop. On April 26th, 2016, Ogden talked to Kelly again, saying he knew she was the mastermind behind Chris' murder. Kelly smirked, but didn't deny it. She agreed to come in the next day for a polygraph test: lie detection.
But instead of coming in, she fled the state. The next day, Kelly sent Ogden a text: "The West Coast looks good this time of day." Ogden and Frizzo set to work locating Kelly's phone, and it pinged in Wingo, Kentucky. Kelly had a cousin there; she was probably at their house. Her quip about the West Coast was a decoy.
So they sent in the U.S. Marshals. Around 8 p.m. on April 28th, they descended on the Cousins' house, found Kelly, and took her into custody. If Kelly wanted to play games, here was a checkmate.
Once Kelly was behind bars, it seemed like she accepted her fate. She finally confessed to Ogden, describing the vow she and Jason made at their wedding. If either cheated, they pledged to kill their affair partner. Ogden was horrified. He knew Kelly was dark and sadistic, but somehow the truth felt even worse than he'd imagined.
A few weeks later, Kelly was transferred to an Iron County jail and charged with the first-degree murder of Chris Regan. She was also charged with home invasion, conspiring to mutilate dead bodies, concealing a death, lying to police, and acting as an accessory to a felony.
On May 17th, Kelly was finally ready to reveal Chris's remains. For a price. She requested that the police buy her a cheese pizza in return for her compliance. The police ordered the pizza. Kelly accompanied them to another search of her house, where she nonchalantly pointed out a pair of forceps left lying in her sink.
Between mouthfuls of pizza, she explained that she couldn't remember if she or Jason had washed them, but they'd used the forceps to remove the bullet from Chris Regan's skull. The police took the forceps for analysis. In another part of this search, Police Chief Rizzo took Kelly back up the Pentoga Trail. This time, Kelly led the search team to a different spot in the forest, where they found a human skull.
The lab revealed it was Chris Regan's, and the forceps from Kelly's sink had traces of Chris' DNA. Finally, they had incontrovertible evidence. The murder was solved. For Chris' loved ones, it was the first step to getting closure. But justice wasn't served yet. Kelly's trial was set for February 14th, 2017.
Court documents noted that in addition to her charges related to Chris's death, she was still under investigation for Jason's and, quote, "...in addition, defendant has claimed responsibility for the death of other individuals which would, if true, make her a serial killer." Still, Kelly pleaded not guilty.
On the stand, she described Jason as violent and abusive. She insisted Jason had planned and executed the murder. She testified that his manuscript, Where Monsters Hide, was true and autobiographical, even accounts of violent murders. She also testified that Jason killed many more people besides Chris and fed them to the couple's pigs.
Meanwhile, defense attorneys suggested that everything Kelly ever said was a lie, so there was no way to know if she was guilty of anything, besides lying to the police of course. The jurors were unconvinced. After two weeks, Kelly Cochran was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
She continued to plead her innocence, mailing a handwritten letter to the Chicago Post-Tribune. According to forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, Kelly did this to control the narrative, hoping they'd share her side of the story. Instead, the Post-Tribune brought in three psychologists to analyze the letter, including Dr. Ramsland. She and the other forensic psychologists were in agreement. Kelly had zero remorse.
Eric Hickey told the Post Tribune about a term called semantic aphasia, which he says means they know the words to a song, but they don't feel the music. So when you get down to the basics, they know it's illegal to kill somebody, but they don't feel badly about it.
The next year, Kelly was back in court again, on trial for killing her husband. This time, she pled guilty, admitting to injecting Jason with heroin, suffocating him to death, and then vomiting into his mouth to make the "overdose" look more convincing. But she was adamant that she'd only killed Jason because he'd abused her, and as punishment for killing Chris.
She was sentenced to 65 years in prison, to be served consecutively with her life sentence for Chris Regan's murder. Kelly appealed, but in 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court denied that appeal.
So Kelly Cochran remained behind bars, serving life without parole. Her potential accomplice was dead, and police chief Frizzo and Detective Ogden finally moved on from solving a murder to planning a wedding.
That's right. The two lead investigators met and fell in love while solving this case. And as of 2023, they're happily married. It felt like everything was tied up with a neat bow, except it wasn't.
You see, according to Josh Hallmark's podcast, The Pact, Kelly's guilty plea included a very interesting and unusual clause: she wanted guaranteed immunity from any murders committed in the state of Indiana. Which heavily implies she killed someone in Indiana. Both Chief Frizzo and Detective Ogden believe that to be the case.
Frizzo believes Chris Regan's murder was too organized and too clean for it to be the couple's first. And Ogden thinks Kelly's story of how Chris died is logistically unlikely. He's certain she and Jason did it, but believes there's more to the story.
First off, Kelly's tattoos. Kelly says she has 14 butterfly tattoos, with at least four visible on her arms. Butterflies seem to be a personal symbol. They were all over her home decor. She told multiple interviewers that the butterfly tattoos are, quote, symbolic to people I've lost, and also represent foreshadowing.
Freedom. When asked about them during one of her trials, Kelly went on a long rant about how butterflies are attracted to dead bodies. Chief Frizzo believes each tattoo represents one of Kelly's victims. Chilling, especially knowing that she got at least one of these tattoos before her wedding at age 20. And it's not just Police Chief Frizzo and Detective Ogden who believe Kelly has a higher victim count.
Kelly's brother brought his own account to the police. He said Kelly and Jason had nine victims, and when they lived in Indiana, Jason fed their victims' bodies to their pigs. And on a recorded call, Kelly confessed to her mom that she was a serial killer, and she'd never felt empathy or remorse.
This is all in addition to the multitude of confessions Kelly made to the police. At various points, Kelly claimed she and Jason killed anywhere from two to 32 people, sometimes separately and sometimes together.
While these could be false confessions, Kelly described some crimes in extreme detail, including specifics that line up with open homicide cases. Some of her confessions also match Jason's descriptions of murders in his manuscript, Where Monsters Hide.
In his podcast, The Pact, Josh Hallmark investigated several potential victims. Those victims include one in Indiana, where Kelly can't be prosecuted, and one in Minnesota. To be clear, no charges have been brought against Kelly in either case as of early 2024. The Indiana victim is a man named Andrew Fugate, who worked at a butcher shop in Kelly and Jason's small town.
He typically took the early morning shift. Around 5 a.m. on November 4th, 2013, security camera footage captured two people exiting an SUV outside the store and walking inside. Within 10 minutes, they came back out and drove away. Later that day, Andrew Fugate was found in the meat freezer. He'd been shot in the back of the head.
A few months later, Kelly and Jason abandoned their business, their pig farm, and their lifelong home and moved hundreds of miles away to Minnesota. Andrew's murder remains unsolved. The second possible victim is from June 2014. Single dad Jason Reuter was found in his own front yard, also shot to death.
In her interviews with Detective Ogden, Kelly claimed she had victims in Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, and just one friend in Minnesota. As of 2024, Jason's murder remains unsolved.
In the 10 years since Chris Regan's murder, Kelly Cochran's story has changed more times than anyone can count. As recently as 2023, she claimed that she was unable to save Chris because Jason had tied her up, a direct contradiction to her previous accounts.
We can't ever know what's true and what's a lie when it comes to Kelly and Jason Cochran, but we can hope that in the next decade, the interest in this story brings closure to unsolved homicides across the Midwest.
Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
Amongst the many sources we used, we found Where Monsters Hide, Sex, Murder, and the Madness in the Midwest by M. William Phelps, extremely helpful to our research. The audiobook edition is available for Spotify Premium subscribers in Spotify's audiobook catalog, so you can check it out after listening to this episode. ♪
Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Sarah Hussain, edited by Natalie Pertzofsky, Terrell Wells, and Maggie Admire, researched by Mickey Taylor and Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Hayley Milliken and Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Kelly Gary. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson.
and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.